Readonly models in Django admin interface?

The admin is for editing, not just viewing (you won't find a "view" permission). In order to achieve what you want you'll have to forbid adding, deleting, and make all fields readonly:

class MyAdmin(ModelAdmin):    def has_add_permission(self, request, obj=None):        return False    def has_delete_permission(self, request, obj=None):        return False

(if you forbid changing you won't even get to see the objects)

For some untested code that tries to automate setting all fields read-only see my answer to Whole model as read-only

EDIT: also untested but just had a look at my LogEntryAdmin and it has

readonly_fields = MyModel._meta.get_all_field_names()

Don't know if that will work in all cases.

EDIT: QuerySet.delete() may still bulk delete objects. To get around this, provide your own "objects" manager and corresponding QuerySet subclass which doesn't delete - see Overriding QuerySet.delete() in Django

Here are two classes I am using to make a model and/or it's inlines read only.

For model admin:

from django.contrib import adminclass ReadOnlyAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):    readonly_fields = []    def get_readonly_fields(self, request, obj=None):        return list(self.readonly_fields) + \               [field.name for field in obj._meta.fields] + \               [field.name for field in obj._meta.many_to_many]    def has_add_permission(self, request):        return False    def has_delete_permission(self, request, obj=None):        return Falseclass MyModelAdmin(ReadOnlyAdmin):    pass

For inlines:

class ReadOnlyTabularInline(admin.TabularInline):    extra = 0    can_delete = False    editable_fields = []    readonly_fields = []    exclude = []    def get_readonly_fields(self, request, obj=None):        return list(self.readonly_fields) + \               [field.name for field in self.model._meta.fields                if field.name not in self.editable_fields and                   field.name not in self.exclude]    def has_add_permission(self, request):        return Falseclass MyInline(ReadOnlyTabularInline):    pass

See https://djangosnippets.org/snippets/10539/

class ReadOnlyAdminMixin(object):    """Disables all editing capabilities."""    change_form_template = "admin/view.html"    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):        super(ReadOnlyAdminMixin, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)        self.readonly_fields = [f.name for f in self.model._meta.get_fields()]    def get_actions(self, request):        actions = super(ReadOnlyAdminMixin, self).get_actions(request)        del_action = "delete_selected"        if del_action in actions:            del actions[del_action]        return actions    def has_add_permission(self, request):        return False    def has_delete_permission(self, request, obj=None):        return False    def save_model(self, request, obj, form, change):        pass    def delete_model(self, request, obj):        pass    def save_related(self, request, form, formsets, change):        pass

templates/admin/view.html

{% extends "admin/change_form.html" %}{% load i18n %}{% block submit_buttons_bottom %}  <div class="submit-row">    <a href="../">{% blocktrans %}Back to list{% endblocktrans %}</a>  </div>{% endblock %}

templates/admin/view.html (for Grappelli)

{% extends "admin/change_form.html" %}{% load i18n %}{% block submit_buttons_bottom %}  <footer class="grp-module grp-submit-row grp-fixed-footer">    <header style="display:none"><h1>{% trans "submit options"|capfirst context "heading" %}</h1></header>    <ul>       <li><a href="../" class="grp-button grp-default">{% blocktrans %}Back to list{% endblocktrans %}</a></li>    </ul>  </footer>{% endblock %}